Hate playing scales or doing fitness drills? In the not-so-distant future, the hours of repetitive practice necessary to learn a musical instrument, new sport, or dance may be a relic of the past. Lara Boyd, a researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, believes a promising new technology called magnetic brain stimulation could cut the practice time required to learn a new motor skill.

Engineers often seek ways to improve something that really bugs them. For Missouri high school seniors Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson, that something was the watery ketchup that first squirts from the bottle – and they designed a device to solve the problem.